1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for reducing power consumption caused by communication between processors in the portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Portable terminals have been rapidly adopted due to their convenience and have become essential tools of modern life. The rapid rate of adoption is at least partly due to service providers and terminal manufacturers providing additional functions to increase the utility of the portable terminals.
The increase in the additional functions and the improvement of the portable terminal has resulted in an increase of a computational amount to be processed in the portable terminal. As a result, a portable terminal employing two or more processors has been introduced. In this case, information displayed on a display unit of the portable terminal is controlled by one processor. Accordingly, among status information displayed on the display unit, information generated by another processor is delivered to the processor for controlling the display unit through communication between the processors. The processor for controlling the display unit then generates image data for displaying an indicator that indicates the status information. The display unit then displays the indicator according to the image data. For example, the indicator may be an antenna bar that indicates received signal strength.
In general, the display unit of the portable terminal is not always in an ON status, and is turned off when there is no key input for a specific time period. When the display unit is in an OFF status, there is no need to generate the image data for displaying the indicator that indicates the status information such as the antenna bar. However, the status information is delivered to the processor for controlling the display unit irrespective of the ON/OFF status of the display unit. Accordingly, power is unnecessarily wasted due to unnecessary communication between the processors.